A major challenge of contemporary neuroscience is to unravel the structure of the connectome, the ensemble of neural connections that link between different functional units of the brain, and to reveal how this structure relates to brain function. This thriving area of research largely follows the general tradition in biology of reverse-engineering, which consists of first observing and characterizing a biological system or process, and then deconstructing it into its fundamental building blocks in order to infer its modes of operation. However, a complementary form of biology has emerged, synthetic biology, which emphasizes construction-based forward-engineering. The synthetic biology approach comprises the assembly of new biological systems out of elementary biological parts. The rationale is that the act of building a system can be a powerful method for gaining deep understanding of how that system works. As the fields of connectomics and synthetic biology are independently growing, I propose to consider the benefits of combining the two, to create synthetic connectomics, a new form of neuroscience and a new form of synthetic biology. The goal of synthetic connectomics would be to artificially design and construct the connectomes of live behaving organisms. Synthetic connectomics could serve as a unifying platform for unraveling the complexities of brain operation and perhaps also for generating new forms of artificial life, and, in general, could provide a valuable opportunity for empirically exploring theoretical predictions about network function. What would a synthetic connectome look like? What purposes would it serve? How could it be constructed? This review delineates the novel notion of a synthetic connectome and aims to lay out the initial steps towards its implementation, contemplating its impact on science and society.

当代神经科学的一个主要挑战是解开连接组的结构，即连接大脑不同功能单元之间的神经连接的集合，并揭示这种结构与大脑功能的关系。这个蓬勃发展的研究领域在很大程度上遵循了逆向工程生物学的一般传统，包括首先观察和表征生物系统或过程，然后将其解构为基本构建块，以推断其操作模式。然而，出现了一种互补的生物学形式，即合成生物学，它强调基于构建的正向工程. 合成生物学方法包括从基本生物部分组装新的生物系统。其基本原理是构建系统的行为可以成为深入了解该系统如何工作的有效方法。随着连接组学和合成生物学领域的独立发展，我建议考虑将两者结合起来的好处，创建合成连接组学，一种新形式的神经科学和一种新形式的合成生物学。合成连接组学的目标是人工设计和构建活动生物的连接组。合成连接组学可以作为一个统一的平台，用于解开大脑操作的复杂性，或许也可以用于产生新的人工生命形式，而且，总的来说，可以为实证探索有关网络功能的理论预测提供宝贵的机会。合成连接组会是什么样子？它有什么用途？怎么可能建造？这篇综述描述了合成连接组的新概念，旨在展示其实施的初步步骤，考虑其对科学和社会的影响。